Evan E. Lambert

Parks and Recreation gave us lots of great things, from Lil' Sebastian to the Cones of Dunshire--but nothing beats the small, fictional town at the center of the show: Pawnee, Indiana.

2024 has been a great year for Godzillas around the globe. First, Godzilla Minus One nabbed the Oscar for Best Visual Effects in March. Now, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a box office titan, having drawn $194 million worldwide in its first weekend. As for The New Empire’s popularity with critics, that’s another…

The X-Men are back, and they’re here to save Marvel. After a string of misfires and scandals, the company needed one bonafide TV or movie hit to win back its reputation. Well, maybe two or three. But X-Men ‘97 is a solid place to start. Created by X-Men omega-fan Beau DeMayo, this reboot of the…

With Netflix’s adaptation of the trippy Chinese sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem, David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo have taken a dense book about thinly drawn characters solving math problems and turned it into a visually stunning sci-fi horror-mystery. Now, it’s true that the series has left out the breathless passages about Newtonian…

Whether you love or feel indifferent towards Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, you probably have fond memories of the series’ first season, Bette and Joan. Deliciously melodramatic and often quite insightful, it accomplished one major task: letting Old Hollywood icons Bette Davis and Joan Crawford go at it. There’s no schadenfreude quite like the one…

Making a movie is a collaborative process. You can’t make one without a script, of course, but you also can’t make one without actors or producers (or editors or stunt performers, etc., ad nauseam). The actors sometimes write some scenes themselves, especially when given free rein by their directors. In certain cases, the actors improvise…

Grey’s Anatomy is a dinosaur. A non-threatening, herbivorous dinosaur, certainly – imagine the Parasaurolophus, with its goofy banana head. But a dinosaur nonetheless. After this current season, its 20th, Grey’s Anatomy will become the sixth-longest-running scripted series in television history. It will be tied with American Dad and surpassed by only The Simpsons, Law &…

One of the best new shows of 2024 is also one of the most difficult to keep up with. Shōgun, which follows an English sailor stranded in Japan in the early 17th century, has so many characters that you’ll need the entire season just to learn their names. And by that point, there’s no use,…

Thanks to its sweeping narrative, starry cast, and magnificent cinematography, Dune 2 is already attracting 2025 Oscars buzz. Every action scene is nimbly choreographed and memorably cool. Every actor is at the top of their game. Every sound serves a purpose, every line a theme. When critics say it’s a “defining” movie of the sci-fi…

Twenty years ago, comedies were more than throwaway diversions deposited on Netflix every two months. More often than not, they were cultural juggernauts, dominating American minds and mouths, spurring countless friends to quote them over AIM. It was in this universe that 2004’s Anchorman flourished. Fueled by the mostly improvised stylings of star Will Ferrell…

For every sincere, realistic depiction of love on screen, there’s a beloved rom-com hero who embodies chaotic evil. We’re not talking light stalking, either; there’s enough of that in rom-coms. We’re talking genuinely unhinged behavior – what you’d expect from a horror movie villain at the beginning of their origin story. And yet, we accept…

If you’re still watching Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, then you’re probably watching for the Tom Hollander and Naomi Watts of it all. This highly fictionalized series lost the plot in Episode 2 and settled for vaguely campy, meandering melodrama ( bolstered only by brilliant acting and production design). The glossy camerawork and detailed costuming…

It’s hard to believe now, but there was once a time when Netflix sent people physical DVDs, families planned their weeks around network dramas, and shows had to remain intriguing for 21 whole episodes. “Bottle episodes” were still a novelty; playing with narrative conventions was still unconventional; and Meryl Streep wouldn’t have been caught dead…

To us normal folk, Hollywood represents all things glamorous. Who wouldn’t want to have their face beamed into thousands of theaters – and to millions of theatergoers – every weekend? Add to that the parties, mansions, Met Galas, and Paris Fashion Weeks, and you have yourself a deal. We’d all try to be famous actors…

If you haven’t heard of One Day on Netflix, then you’re probably not a regular on BookTok. Of course, there may be merit in such a decision – we’ll let the aliens judge for themselves when they study us in the future – but you’d still be missing out on a rom-com gem that has…

If you loved David Nicholls’ swoony and clever 2009 novel One Day, then you may already know that it’s currently streaming in limited series form on Netflix. You may also know that there was a 2011 movie version of it starring Anne Hathaway. Unfortunately, it pulled pretty terrible reviews, mostly because of Hathaway’s wobbly British…

The new action comedy Argylle is getting as much buzz for its endless twists as it is for its suspected connection to Taylor Swift. Many Swifties believe that their goddess is secretly the author of the unpublished, possibly nonexistent book that the movie is based on. However, little is known about the film’s actual content.…